Book by Silverberg, Robert

Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I've discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there's more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my-what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly, I have to admit, I wrote these stories because I couldn't not write them. Well, so be it. They involved me in a lot of hard work, but for me, at least, the results justify the toil. I'm glad I wrote them. Writing them, it turns out, was important for me, and even pleasurable, in a curiously complex after-the-fact kind of way. May they give you pleasure now too. -Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Now ibooks proudly presents a collection of Silverberg's best short fiction, as selected by the author. The 1950s: The Road to Nightfall, The Macauley Circuit, Sunrise on Mercury, Warm Man. The 1960s: To See the Invisible Man, Flies, Passengers, Nightwings, Sundance. The 1970s: Good News from the Vatican, Capricorn Games, Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies. The 1980s: The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve, The Pope of the Chimps, Needle in a Timestack, Sailing to Byzantium, Enter a Soldier. Later, Enter Another. The 1990s: Hunters in the Forest, Death Do Us Part, Beauty in the Night. The 2000s: The Millennium Express, With Caesar in the Underworld.

The Very Best of Australian Speculative Fiction! Russell Blackford Paul Brandon Damien Broderick Simon Brown Isobelle Carmody Paul Collins Stephen Dedman Sara Douglass Terry Dowling Andrew Enstice Kerry Greenwood Robert Hood David J. Lake Chris Lawson Rowena Cory Lindquist Rosaleen Love Sean McMullen Ian Nichols Steven Paulsen Jane Routley Cecily Scutt Aaron Sterns Dirk Strasser Lucy Sussex Norman Talbot George Turner Wynne Whiteford Cherry Wilder Sean Williams Tess Williams

Once in a Black Moon (2020) A modern-day journalist is transported back in time to 1900 western Canada. Awaking to learn she may be the victim of some unknown crime, Erin takes shelter with the local Mountie-the picture of upright Canadian fortitude. As tragedy stalks the nearby First Nation reserve, Erin learns from a Romanian mystic that magic is dying, and the fae are turning to their darker natures to survive. "A love so strong that it travels through time to bring two hearts together." -Iuliana Foos, author of The Bloodline Trilogy A Very Witchy Yuletide (2020) While a disbanded coven of modern Pagans gets together for the winter solstice, two among them must face the first love they were never honest with. The Treason of Robyn Hood (2021) When dark truths about her adoptive family are revealed, Robyn Loxley must answer what justice means to her and what she's willing to do to exact it. Robyn and the merry band get an update in this dieselpunk adventure. "The Treason of Robyn Hood has suspense, drama, humor, romance, and action, all jam-packed in a tightly paced novel full of intrigue...I enjoyed it immensely and will highly recommend it to fans of fantasy and adventure." -Readers' Favorite(R) "Connoisseurs of urban fantasy and offbeat romance will find this novel both a fun and fulfilling read. The clever characterizations and skillful melding of fantasy, adventure, and romance put a spotlight on sisterly devotion, oddball alliances, social conscience, and the human ability to rise above broken hearts and broken lives." -The US Review of Books "Urban fantasy readers usually don't receive stories that include the trappings of an alternate history and updated steampunk themes, but The Treason of Robyn Hood's ability to incorporate both into its story of social justice and confrontation creates an atmosphere both familiar and alien at the same time. Thus, the original Robin Hood becomes an exploration of a feisty female's determination and abilities, whether it be in battle or political cat-and-mouse games." -D. Donovan, Senior Editor, Midwest Book Review The Fanciful Travels of D. Lieber is a collection of three of Lieber's novels. Journey with her to transcend time and space, exploring fantastic worlds and stories.

This stellar collection of Jewish science fiction and fantasy carries on in the tradition of its companion volume--the enduring classic Wandering Stars --breaking new ground with every story. Trouble with mothers; invading aliens and demons; the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah ... all these phenomena and more are tackled in these tales from a creative group of extraordinary writers. We go to the edges of the universe, finding humor, pain and humanity in the unlikeliest of places and situations. Filled with wit, vigor and sharp insight, this is a fantastic feast for the imagination that will intrigue and delight everyone who picks it up, Jew and non-Jew alike.

The world that these stories sprang from was the troubled, bewildering, dangerous, and very exciting world of those weird years when the barriers were down and the future was rushing into the present with the force of a river unleashed. But of course I think these stories speak to our times, too, and that most of them will remain valid as we go staggering onward through the brave new world of the twenty-first century. I am not one of those who believes that all is lost and the end is nigh. Like William Faulkner, I do think we will somehow endure and prevail against increasingly stiff odds. A great many strange and dizzying things happen to the characters in these sixteen stories, and in the fourteen stories of the 1972-73 volume that will follow. The reader who makes the journey from beginning to end of all thirty stories will be taken on many a curious trip, that I promise-as was their author during the years when they were being written. -Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction

Short story collection containing such gems as "Antibodies," "Bear Trap," "Extracts from the Club Diary," "A Colder War," "TOAST: A con report," "A Boy and His God," "Ship of Fools," "Dechlorinating the Moderator," "Yellow Snow," and "Big Brother Iron.""I hadn't been paying close attention to Stross's work. It's a mistake I won't make again." -- Michael Swanwick

A non-binary teenager may be from a small town but they remember at least a dozen past lives; a young trans woman auditions as an anime voice actor while the world is ending; in a future of constant change and transformation, one person is hesitant to undergo the next metamorphosis; a trans man comes back home to discover his parents have added to the household an android that has his deadface installed. Award-winning editor Bogi Takács has assembled a stellar line-up of stories that explore the frontiers of gender--using the imaginative tools of speculative fiction.

The discovery of piles of bones seeming to belong to a previously unknown species of monster will help to unfold a macabre and grisly tale. - A lady is found dead in her bed, the apparent victim of a murder the coroner proves could not possibly have occurred. - A merman found by fishermen off the coast of Brighton in 1745 will reveal the truth behind one of the most terrible events of the 20th century. - A desperate man makes a bad bargain with a man in black; an extraordinarily horrible dummy exercises a frightful control over his terrified ventriloquist; a condemned murderer lives again through the eyes of an innocent child . . . These are the plots of just a few of the brilliant tales you will find in this volume as you enter the bizarre world of master storyteller Gerald Kersh. With a focus on Kersh's science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, On an Odd Note (1958) contains thirteen of his best. This first-ever reprint features a new introduction by Nick Mamatas. Contains: Seed of Destruction, Frozen Beauty, Reflections in a Tablespoon, The Crewel Needle, The Sympathetic Souse, The Queen of Pig Island, Prophet Without Honor, The Beggars' Stone, The Extraordinarily Horrible Dummy, The Brighton Monster, Fantasy of a Hunted Man, The Gentleman All in Black, and The Eye. "Gerald Kersh had a wild imagination matched by a vivid, near-hallucinatory style. Many of his concepts are so original that they blur the distinction between fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and horror, but the cumulative impact of his short stories is horrific in the extreme." - Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural "Kersh tells a story, as such, rather better than anybody else." - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph "Gerald Kersh has a strange, perverted sort of genius. And how he can write!" - Virginia Kirkus

Includes the Nebula Award-winning "Da Vinci Rising"; the Nebula Award finalists "Going Under," "The Diamond Pit," "Bad Medicine," "Camps," "A Quiet Revolution for Death," and "Blind Shemmy." From magic realism to fantasy, SF, and horror, this collection of Jack Dann's short fiction showcases his originality, range, and narrative power, and demonstrates why critics have compared his work to that of Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, J. G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick.

INTERPLANETARY ODYSSEYS ".....One of the novas of the SF cosmos." The New Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction Interplanetary Odysseys collects together all of Stanley G. Weinbaum's tales set on the planets and moons of our own solar system. With their colony cities and fast, easy space travel, these stories from the great romantic tradition of SF remain entertaining, readable and relevant. Weinbaum was noted as the first SF writer to create believable aliens that were a product of their own planetary environments and eco-systems. The lead story, the classic "A Martian Odyssey", demonstrates this talent perfectly and with the nine other tales included here it gives readers new and old a chance to relive the sense of wonder that sprang from the glory days of science fiction.

The late Terry Carr's Universe series was widely acknowledged as the foremost anthology of original science fiction stories. Editors Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber maintained Carr's standard of excellence when selecting stories for Universe 1 (which appeared on the 1990 Locus Recommended Reading List) and Universe 2, another wide-ranging, visionary collection.

The stories in this year's selection are sometimes grim, sometimes cheerful, sometimes quirky--but always full of emotion. Editor Takács has assembled a wide range of non-cis experiences: from an intergalactic art heist to the everyday life of a trans woman through the lens of horror movies; non-binary parenting in the far future, to a unique method of traveling back to the past. Steampunk, ghosts, even deities, all can be found in these stories that show how transness can relate to and subvert so many themes at the heart of speculative fiction. The introduction also includes a section on year-to-year changes in transgender SFF, and assembled longer-form trans highlights.

As with the first volume of Transcendent, Lethe Press has worked with a wonderful editor to select the best work of genderqueer stories of the fantastical, stranger, horrific, and weird published the prior year. Featuring stories by Merc Rustad, Jeanne Thornton, Brit Mandelo, and others, this anthology offers time-honored tropes of the genre--from genetic manipulation to zombies, portal fantasy to haunts--but told from a perspective that breaks the rigidity of gender and sexuality. A winner for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction

From the Introduction by Ed Gorman: If there's one thing Dick Lupoff understands (with perverse glee) it's the sorry state of the human condition. In this collection you'll find a wide variety of humans whose conditions leave much to be desired. A pit bull owner who's just as nasty as his dog A thief who believes his father-in-law was a real Nazi A dead-end boxer who has come back in a boxing movie A detective named Caligula Foxx who might be Nero Wolfe in drag A crooked corporal whose payoff is death Not only are the storylines original, the writing is indelibly stamped with Dick's vision and voice. Dick's writing talents really can't be defined by the usual means. Yes, he writes science fiction. Yes, he writes fantasy. Yes, he writes mystery. But what he really writes are Lupoffs. Long, short, hilarious, whimsical, dark, mysterious-they're all Lupoffs. Richard A. Lupoff is the author of many books including the popular Lindsey-and-Plum mysteries. The next of these, The Emerald Cat Killer, will be published by St. Martin's Press in October, 2010. His most recent collection of mysteries is Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix, published by Crippen & Landru.

The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evolve within the field of writing I loved--building on the best that went before me, the work of Theodore Sturgeon and James Blish and Cyril Kornbluth and Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick and half a dozen others whose great stories had been beacons beckoning me onward--and then, as I reached my own maturity, now trying to bring science fiction along with me into a new realm of development, hauling it along even farther out of its pulp-magazine origins toward what I regarded as a more resonant and evocative kind of visionary storytelling. --Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

"I have long admired the things Dick Lupoff can do in the way of atmosphere and characterization in any sort of story-dark or light."-ROGER ZELAZNY "His books and stories, I can testify, having read a great many of them and published some myself, almost unfailingly display not only his intelligence and perceptivity, but also the grace and charm of his wit, the skill of his narrative technique, and the exemplary individuality of his ideas."-ROBERT SILVERBERG DREAMS marks the long-awaited completion of Richard A. Lupoff's epic trio of collections, following TERRORS and VISIONS. The stories range from Lovecraftian horror to Holmesian detection, from hard science fiction to whimsy, from semi-autobiographical recreations of past decades to images of the distant future, culminating in the stunning mini-trilogy of "Dreemz.biz," "Wyshes.com," and "Heaven.god." Whatever the genre or mood, these stories never cease to startle, delight, amaze, and-occasionally-terrify!

Strange Genius is a collection of stories about people whose minds are beyond the ordinary. Included is the hard to find novel The New Adam, a surprising tale of homo superior born among us, the first of a new human race, an evolutionary leap and a man whose mind is so different that he's an alien on his own planet. Also included are the humorous van Manderpootz stories about a scientific genius who wants everyone to know how great he is, and several more of Weinbaum's delightful tales of the human mind at work.

In the 80s, writer/wiseman Richard A. Lupoff came out with two volumes of what was to be a series: the WHAT IF? books. Each volume took a half-dozen or so years from the 60s and 70s and discussed, with Richard's 20-20 hindsight, the state of SFdom during those years. To illustrate his many points, he provided us with brilliant short stories by the best writers of the period in question, stories that DIDN'T win the Hugo that year, but maybe should have. As we know, because of politics and other often irrelevant things, the best works don't always end up winning. That's the sort of thing that is discussed in Richard's text for each year. The first two volumes were published in the 80s to great acclaim but due to some politics (or something) the third volume was never published, even though it was finalized. Fast forward to 2013 when Richard A. Lupoff, the major domo of Surinam Turtle Press, can ignore petty politics and pretty much publish what he damn well pleases. And it pleases him immensely to see WHAT IF? #3 finally see the light of day. These are the stories and authors featured in this volume. Read it and salivate. 1966 - Light of Other Days - Bob Shaw 1967 - The Star-Pit - Samuel R. Delany 1968 - The Barbarian - Joanna Russ 1969 - Sundance - Robert Silverberg 1970 - The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories - Gene Wolfe 1971 - Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - Ursula K. Le Guin 1972 - Painwise - James Tiptree, Jr. 1973 - My Brother Leopold - Edgar Pangborn